Game On (AN OUT OF BOUNDS NOVEL)

by Solheim, Tracy

  But something had changed inside him tonight. He had put not only the kid in harm’s way, but Carly as well. The fear he’d felt as he raced into her house scared the hell out of him. He was responsible for Bruce’s son, and no matter what the circumstances of the guardianship, he vowed to himself in the now quiet bedroom to make sure nothing ever happened him.

  Or to Carly. For once, he wasn’t even considering the ramifications to his career if something happened to her. He just knew he had to keep her safe at all costs. He tried to tell himself it was just because he felt a strong connection to her physically. Deep down, though, he knew it was something more.

  She snuggled closer and his body jumped in response. Sainthood was not something he aspired to. But tonight, Carly needed to feel safe, so he’d do his best to hold his baser instincts in check. It was definitely a new experience for Shane.

  Eighteen

  Shane was an idiot. A freaking idiot. He had two weeks to get himself rested and ready for training camp. As he’d done every other season, he had planned to spend that time relaxing, fishing, and boning up on his playbook at his cabin in the Allegheny Mountains. Alone.

  Instead, he was playing babysitter and nursemaid to a chatty twelve-year-old and a very distracting, sexy woman who should be three hundred miles away writing up new rules about how tightly a player’s cleats should be tied. A long-suffering sigh escaped as he hefted four plastic bags filled with groceries onto the stainless steel countertop. The place was still a bit stuffy, but Carly was walking around the great room opening up the French doors to the A-frame cabin’s deck, letting in a light breeze. The sounds of Beckett barking and the kid laughing only added to Shane’s growing disgust with himself.

  “This place is gorgeous.”

  Shane looked up across the industrial-outfitted kitchen and into the great room, which was open to the two stories above, to where Carly stood. She reached up to run her fingers along the mammoth stone fireplace. She was gorgeous. The fragileness in her eyes had faded as the day wore on, but he knew she was still edgy. The smiles she’d doled out to the kid were stiffer than her usual, easy grins. Still, she was a tough one, he’d give her that. The decision to bring her along had been instinctive. He couldn’t leave her in Baltimore, but he should have sent her to the beach where her sister and Coach could watch out for her and he wouldn’t have to battle his lusty thoughts.

  Yep, definitely an idiot.

  “When you said a cabin, I was expecting something a bit more . . . rustic. And definitely smaller.”

  Shane silently unpacked the groceries, letting Carly have a one-sided conversation. He knew he was being a jerk, but he didn’t care. Last night had been long and sleepless for him. He wasn’t used to sharing a bed with a woman without sex being involved. Carly spent most of the night clinging to him as she drifted in and out of a fitful sleep. He’d spent most of it hard despite trying to conjure up images of the Golden Girls in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Nothing worked. He was tired and mean from fighting off his desire to sink into Carly every time she laughed at the kid or bent over to pat Beckett.

  “How long have you had it?”

  He jumped at the sound of her voice. She’d joined him in the kitchen and was pulling bottles of water out of their case, loading them in the huge Thermador refrigerator.

  How long had he had a serious case of the hots for her? Since the moment I laid eyes on you. He was pretty sure her question was about the cabin, though.

  Shane gave up ignoring her. “I grew up a couple hundred yards down the side of the mountain. My grandparents had a prefab house—you’d call it a trailer—that couldn’t be hauled up to this spot. My grandmother always liked to picnic up here, though. Grandpa dragged an old redwood picnic table up here so we could eat dinner in ‘God’s kitchen,’ as my grandmother referred to it.” He pulled apples from a plastic bag and tossed them next to some bananas in a fruit bowl.

  “That sounds nice,” Carly said as she paused in front of the open fridge.

  “It was a pain in the ass.” He wadded up the plastic bags and tossed them in a drawer. Carly gave him a hard look as he grabbed the cardboard case and began to break it down for recycling. “It’s a long way to carry a supper up and back every night,” he said in response to her look. “After I signed with the pros, I built this place for them.”

  Leaning against the stainless steel fridge, she crossed her arms beneath her breasts and grinned at him. Before she could get the words out, he stopped her.

  “Don’t say it was sweet of me,” he practically growled at her. “My success was as much theirs and they needed a home. I didn’t do it to be sweet.” He watched as she bit back a grin. “My grandmother didn’t live to see it finished. And my grandfather, he just kind of existed here for three years after she died.”

  He’d shocked her, he could see it in her face. Pushing away from the refrigerator, she unwrapped the paper towels, placing them on the decorative rack under the counter.

  “So, no one uses it anymore?” she asked, her back to him.

  “Roscoe and his family use it to ski during the winter,” Shane said as he dumped a bag of tomatoes into the colander in the sink. “He uses it to entertain clients, sometimes.”

  “And you?”

  He rinsed the tomatoes under the water. “I come here this time every year to regroup before the season.”

  “Alone?”

  She’d taunted him once too much. Before he knew what he was doing, he had her pinned against the door of the refrigerator. “Yes, alone,” he said against her neck. “No women. No distractions.” He breathed in the citrus smell of her hair. “You’re a distraction, Carly.”

  Jesus, he was as bad as Tompkins, using his body to force himself on a woman. He pulled back a couple of inches so he could look into her face. What he saw in her eyes wasn’t the terror of a woman being ravaged by a man twice her size, but heat. Sexual heat. Her breathing was as ragged as his as she chewed on her bottom lip.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Snaking her hands around his neck, she pulled his head down. “I know,” she said before her lips met his. Her mouth was soft and warm, and Shane wasted no time returning her kiss. The tension of holding his body in check the previous night and all day drove him on as his hands roamed her body and he devoured her mouth. He couldn’t get enough of her, ready to take her against the cool stainless steel.

  Carly pulled away from the kiss, flinging her head back against the refrigerator door with a moan. Shane’s mind shut down as his aching body took control, his lips cruising a path along her slender neck.

  “There was a rental car place back in town,” she said, breathless. “I can go there and get a car. I’ll go to New York and wait for Julianne to come home.”

  It took a moment for her words to sink in. It took a moment longer for Shane to get his runaway libido back in check. “No,” he said, his tone rough. What was she thinking? What were they both thinking? “You’re not going anywhere until Tompkins is in custody.” Reluctantly pulling back from her, he looked at her again. Her face was flushed and a purple mark was forming on her left shoulder. Christ, he was behaving like an animal. Taking a deep breath, he placed his hands on her shoulders, massaging them gently. Tears shimmered in her eyes and her body began to get that limp, rag-doll feel again.

  “I can’t stay here with you.” She gulped back a sob. “It’s just too tempting to crawl inside you where it’s safe.” Her body shuddered with another suppressed sob.

  Safe. Shane was fairly certain no other woman had used that word to describe him. As flattering as some men might think it, he wasn’t feeling too safe around Carly right now. Not to mention the idea of being responsible for her—and the kid—contributed to his bitter mood.

  “Does Coach know you’re here?” Maybe thinking of the ramifications of them being alone together would
cool them off.

  She nodded slowly. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “I . . . I told them I came to keep Troy company. They know you aren’t exactly thrilled with having him around.”

  Great. Not only did she care more for the other Devlin, but he’d forgotten that the kid was within earshot. He and Carly had been thirty seconds from being naked on the counter and Troy could have walked in on them at any moment. Shane sighed and touched his head to her forehead. The sound of Beckett’s toenails scratching on the tile floor gave them enough warning, however. He let his lips trail along her hairline as she pulled free of his embrace.

  “Saved by the Munchkin and his beast,” he muttered as she scrambled across the kitchen. Beckett bounded into the great room with the kid at his heels.

  “Guess what? There’s a huge fire pit outside. Can we start a fire and make s’mores?” The kid’s voice reverberated throughout the open house as he began rummaging through the remaining grocery bags. “I thought we got marshmallows.”

  “Hey!” Shane yelled, sounding a bit like the father he never knew. “I’m making dinner first.” Beckett scrambled for cover as the kid froze with his hand in the bag. Shane turned to the sink and drenched the tomatoes again so he didn’t have to see the kid’s lip start to quiver. Christ, bringing them here had been the king of bad ideas. But the thought of either one of them being out of his sight rattled him, too. He was tired, horny, and hungry. Two of the three weren’t even his fault. The drive to the cabin had taken twice as long it should have because the other two occupants in the car thought they were starring in a Vacation movie.

  “We have to stop at Cracker Barrel for breakfast,” the kid had said, apparently forgetting the two bowls of cereal he had devoured an hour earlier. “We always stop there when we are on a road trip. Every family does. It’s, like, a tradition or something.” Shane wasn’t sure, but he thought the kid might have ended on a sob.

  Sensitive to the kid’s delicate emotional state, Carly had wasted no time agreeing to his suggestion. “Well,” she’d said, “seeing as how I’ve never been on a family road trip, I think it would be fun to stop. Since it’s tradition.”

  Shane had glared at her across the front seat, but said nothing. Hell, he’d never been on a family road trip either, but that didn’t mean he wanted to waste an hour sitting in a restaurant with all the rest of the summer’s vacationers. It was a battle he wasn’t going to win, in spite of the fact that he was driving.

  So they’d spent half the morning eating a second breakfast while Carly and the kid tried to outdo each other shoving golf tees into a wooden triangle. Shane had actually been lulled into relaxing a little until the grandmotherly waitress who brought the bill commented on what a beautiful family they made. The kid had nearly started blubbering on the spot as the tension coiled even tighter in Shane’s belly. They weren’t a family he’d wanted to shout to the entire restaurant. What they were was a trio of castoffs who nobody wanted. Even the dog was a stray.

  The trip to the Walmart had been another exercise in torture. The kid had kept asking if there were any games or things to do at the cabin. Yeah, there were things to do, but not for a twelve-year-old. UNO cards, a backgammon set, comic books, and enough food to nourish an entire Pop Warner football team made it into the cart. Apparently, cookies and candy made all things better for kids.

  Carly had done some shopping of her own, replenishing her mutilated underwear wardrobe with a package of white cotton bikini panties. Watching her place it on the conveyer belt along with some toiletries she was purchasing, Shane had wanted to rip the package out of her hands. No, he’d wanted to rip Tompkins’s face off, but that wasn’t possible.

  By the time they’d arrived at the cabin, Shane was close to spitting nails. And he was taking it out on the kid. Yeah, he’d just lost his parents. Roscoe and Carly weren’t about to let Shane forget that point. But hell, Shane had been two years younger when his mother died and his father disappeared. And he’d survived just fine. There was no reason to mollycoddle the kid.

  “Can I help?”

  Shane turned to see him standing at the kitchen island, Carly’s arms draped around his shoulders. “Be nice,” she mouthed at him from over the kid’s head. Well, at least he wasn’t crying and he did want to help. Shane put the colander on the island and pulled a knife and cutting board out of the drawer.

  “Here,” he said. “Slice these up while I brown the meat for the pasta sauce.”

  He hesitated before slipping out of Carly’s embrace. “Okay,” he said. Shane watched from the corner of his eye as the kid carefully picked up the knife and held it to the tomato, nearly slicing the tips of his fingers off in the process.

  “Jesus!” Shane jerked the pan off the burner and moved back to the island, startling the kid into dropping the knife as his lip began to quiver again. “Don’t you know how to slice a tomato?” Shane barked.

  Carly shot him a disapproving glare from where she stood uncorking a bottle of wine, looking as though she wanted to poke him in the eye with the corkscrew. The kid bit his lip and lifted his chin up a notch. “No,” he said, hands on his hips. Shane stared at him for a moment before picking up the knife. “Com’ere and I’ll show you how to do it without needing a trip to the emergency room.” The kid stepped back up to the counter and slid under Shane’s arm. Shane demonstrated before positioning the kid’s fingers on the knife and around the tomato. “Nice and easy so you don’t mutilate it.” Cautiously, the kid sliced a piece of the tomato before looking up for approval. Shane nodded and went back to stove. The kitchen was silent except for the sizzle of the meat frying in the pan.

  “We didn’t do much cooking at home,” the kid said softly.

  “Your mom didn’t cook?” Carly’s voice drifted in from the dining room where she was setting plates on the table.

  Shane pulled out a hunk of mozzarella and placed in on the counter to be sliced.

  “Nah, Dad said Mom couldn’t bake her way out of an EasyBake oven.” Troy chuckled. “It was a really good thing we had Consuelo.”

  Carly handed Shane a glass of wine and gave him one of her honeyed smiles that, for the first time today, actually reached her eyes. Pulling out a plate, she wandered over to the island to arrange the tomatoes and cheese. The scene was so domestic, Shane almost shuddered. And, for the millionth time that day, he reminded himself what an idiot he was.

  Nineteen

  The house was dark. Rummaging around trying to find her purse, Carly swore as she stubbed her toe on one of the overstuffed chairs in the great room. She’d been getting ready for bed when she heard her cell phone ring. Finding a light switch proved almost as impossible as finding her phone. Relief flooded her body, however, when, after finding her purse behind a cushion, she listened to the voicemail message Donovan had left.

  “The police scored a lucky break and arrested Joel during a random drug sting tonight. I guess this is one time his being a junkie works in our favor,” Donovan said. “He’s in custody and his arraignment is scheduled for the morning. The DA says it’s likely he wouldn’t see the outside of a jail cell until his trial begins and that could easily take months. I’ll call you from the courthouse tomorrow. You can sleep tight now, Carly. It’s over.”

  Carly released a relieved sigh and it felt like she’d taken her first normal breath in twenty-four hours. Turning to return to her room, she collided with Shane as he came up behind her. A nearly naked Shane.

  He gripped her elbows as she laid her palms on his bare chest. His warm body was still hard with the tension that had seemed to consume him the entire day. He didn’t want her there, she knew that. Yet he’d brought her along anyway. It seemed he was once again her knight in shining armor. Carly gave herself a mental shake. Shane wasn’t happily-ever-after material, she reminded herself. He’d just been in the right place at the right time. Again. Try as they both might, they see
med powerless to resist the strong attraction pulling them together.

  “I’m sorry if my phone woke you,” she said. It was dark in the room, with only a shaft of light from the moon shining in through the high windows illuminating the shadows of Shane’s face. His face was hard, showing no reaction to her apology. “The police finally arrested Joel. He’s in custody.”

  He released a heavy sigh. “Good,” he said, pulling her body in contact with his. Two things became immediately apparent to Carly: Shane was potently aroused and she didn’t stand a chance of sleeping alone tonight.

  “I can go back to Baltimore now,” she said as his lips found that spot on her neck that always turned her knees to Jell-O.

  “I’m pretty sure the rental car place is closed,” he mumbled against her skin.

  “Tomorrow then,” she breathed as her hands trailed along the taut muscles of his back. “I shouldn’t be here distracting you.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” he said as he placed an openmouthed kiss beneath her ear. Carly moaned softly before he shushed her.

  “Little ears,” he said, motioning to Troy’s room.

  Somehow he managed to get them to his bedroom where they both quickly shed their clothes. His hands and mouth were not gentle on her body. But Carly didn’t care. Much like that first night they’d slept together, she knew he was using her body to deal with emotions he couldn’t deal with on his own. And she was using him, too. Despite the fact that Joel was finally in custody, she needed to feel safe again. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Shane’s strong body possessing her gave her that feeling—and something more.

  Lying next to his slumbering body, Carly stared at the ceiling. Tomorrow she would leave. First thing in the morning she would call the rental car company. Maybe she’d head to the beach. Or to New York to wait for Julianne to come home. Either way, she needed to get as far away from Shane Devlin as she could. Something happened when she was around him. Obviously, she couldn’t control it. They needed to stick to the original agreement of a brief fling. Things were getting too complicated. She was becoming way too attached to the feeling of security being with Shane somehow provided her. And she was really scared of the “something more” she felt.